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I don’t know how I missed this yesterday. National Geographic has an article on an interesting fossil, dating to about 290 MYA (basically, the beginning of the Permian) , that provides some interesting information on food chains.

The fossilized amphibian is also in exactly the right position to suggest it had been eaten–it was lying tail-first along the shark’s digestive tract, according to Kriwet.
“Also, the fish remains are fully enclosed within the amphibian’s outer covering of scales,” he added. That confirms that it was indeed eaten by the amphibian and not the shark.
Before the shark ate it, the amphibian had caught a young fish known as an acanthodian, which was covered in bony spines.
“The fish was swallowed side on, otherwise the spines could have got stuck in the amphibian’s mouth or throat,” Kriwet said.
“The fish is situated in quite the correct area of digestive tract of the amphibian,” said said study co-author Ulriche Heidtke, a paleontologist from the National History Museum of the Palatinate in Bad Dürkheim, Germany.
“It clearly shows the hallmarks of digestion, [such as] disintegration,” he added.
If the shark had eaten the fish first and then the amphibian, they would be placed one after the other in the shark’s stomach, he explained.

One Response

..and here we see the earliest fossil evidence of the “law of the fishes”.
Very cool, thanks for posting it.

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"You may not be willing to admit that you resemble an ape; if your thousandth ancestor is more like an ape than you are, you may, if you wish, call it a coincidence. But if that thousandth ancestor's forebears become progressively more simian as you trace back the geneological lines, you will have to admit that somewhere in your family tree there squats an ape." Earnest Hooten

Charles Darwin

"But I had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian." Charles Darwin: The Autobiography